Red wine could aid breast cancer treatment

Drinking a glass of red wine every day could make chemotherapy treatment twice as effective at killing cancerous cells

Women who are about to undergo gruelling treatment for breast cancer should be drinking a glass or two of red wine every day, suggests new research.

When women undergo rounds of chemotherapy, the cancerous cells can develop a tolerance over time, hindering the effect of the treatment.

But scientists believe a compound found in red wine called resveratrol could help double the effectiveness of cancer treatment.

Dr Charis Eng, who led the study at the Cleveland Clinic, in Ohio says: ‘Enjoying a glass of red wine or eating a bowl of boiled peanuts – which has a higher resveratrol content than red wine – before rapamycin treatment for cancer might be a prudent approach.’

The lab study on breast cancer found that when rapamycin was used in conjunction with resveratrol, it was twice as effective at killing those cells than using rapamycin alone.

‘Our findings show that resveratrol seems to mitigate rapamycin-induced drug resistance in breast cancers, at least in the laboratory,’ says Dr Eng.